Thursday, May 08, 2008

From Marc Korman: A few weeks ago, I heard District 18 Senator Rich Madaleno refer to the difference between Maryland’s and Virginia’s reliance on federal government spending as the difference between life sciences and death sciences. Maryland benefits when the government is investing in healthcare and scientific research, while Virginia benefits when the government invests in war and defense.

I thought it was an astute, and somewhat humorous observation. The question is, is it true?Broadly speaking, it’s easy to look around and say yes. After all, Virginia has the Pentagon and we have the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institute of Science and Technology. Looking at non-defense science more broadly, Maryland is also home to the Goddard Space Center. But how about if we take a closer look at some other measures of Maryland versus Virginia. Below are three categories to help us examine the issue.

First, we look at the value of government procurement contracts for the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Health and Human Services, and NASA.

Second, we look at the location of the corporate headquarters for the top government contractors for those same government agencies.

Third, we examine how many military installations there are in Maryland and Virginia.

So what do these categories demonstrate? That the facts back up Senator Madaleno’s observation. Virginia receives far more in defense contract dollars than Maryland, and that category far outweighs other federal spending. Virginia also has more military installations, beginning with the Pentagon. However, Maryland does receive some benefit from increased security dollars, including the contribution from Lockheed Martin, one of the state’s largest employers with almost 10,000 people.

Overall, Maryland would benefit much more from increased investment in science, which will hopefully come with a Democratic Administration, while Virginia benefits far more from the military-industrial complex.